This is a topic that has been a source of a lot of frustration and questions for International students: “How to calculate the equivalence of your degree or grades to the Canadian Grading system”.

CHOOSE YOUR GRADUATE PROGRAM

To demonstrate the module to use to accurately calculate the equivalence of your degree or grades, we will use, as a very good example, a Masters program in Animal Science at the University of Manitoba. http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/graduate_studies/admissions/min_requirements.html The first step to take is to visit the website of the university you want to attend. As an example, we will use the university of Manitoba.

WHAT ARE THE ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS?

Once on the website, you visit the programs page and go through the requirements. You will see that the University states: “ALL STUDENTS APPLYING FOR A MASTERS DEGREE PROGRAM MUST HAVE ATTAINED A MINIMUM GPA OF 3.0. (B or equivalent) IN THE LAST TWO FULL YEARS (60 credit hours) OF STUDY “.

WHAT IS THE MINIMUM GRADE REQUIREMENT FOR ADMISSION?

Now, if you are a student, say from Egypt, how will you know whether you have a GPA of 3.0 or more? Each country has its own specific grading system!

DETERMINE YOUR GRADE (FROM YOUR COUNTRY) EQUIVALENCY

Well, there are two options or ways to do this from which the first option is to use services that are available like “WORLD EDUCATION SERVICES” (WES). http://www.wes.org/students/index.asp? What these kinds of establishments or services provides students is that they actually take the information you supply, or the information they request from you, and they will come back with all the sought after information you want like education, degree and grade equivalence in terms of the Canadian Grades system. The only thing, although a wonderful and helpful service to international students, is that it is a paid service, meaning that you will have to pay them to provide this service to you. To show you how to go about using this service, very briefly, have a look at the four steps as they indicate what to do. You will go on-line and a apply to “WORLD EDUCATION SERVICES”, then supply all the required information they seek from you. They will then verify all the academic records and data and prepare an official credential evaluation report which they will then also send to the university. A lot of universities, if not all, works directly with these types of services to obtain the equivalence of International student grades. The other option you have to also obtain your grades or degree equivalence is to visit the website of the university of your choice. We will still use University of Manitoba as an example. On the page called “International GPA Calculations, they have it wonderfully set up to make it easy and quick for international students to calculate their GPA in regards to the Canadian Grading system. http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/graduate_studies/admin/569.html At the top of the page they also give a very good and comprehensive overview of how the GPA can be calculated. Although these pages are University of Manitoba specific, you will by having a look here, be able to get the idea of this is set up and more or less what you can expect in terms of equivalence of your degree or grades. On their example scale they use China as the country to calculate the equivalent and you can see here that you need 85 – 89% to have your grades correspond with a B. Remember now this is for an international student from China. Just beneath this scale, they state how to calculate your GPA and here you can see that a GPA of 3.0 is equivalent to a B. Then, also what they have done, they put together this very, very helpful page for international students. http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/graduate_studies/admissions/equivalencies.html It is possible here to choose your country and we are using Egypt as our example. You can see the Egyptian Grade Scale with percentages and their equivalents. This page is, as you will notice, very Faculty dependant and also by the difficulty level of the field of study or subject of study. They indicate that if you are studying Sciences or Engineering, you would have 75 – 79% for a B. And again, just below, they demonstrate how to calculate your GPA. These universities of Manitoba pages are just a very good example or way to get an idea of how all of this works and it is totally free!!! Although this example and web pages are University of Manitoba specific, you will be able to use this as a roadmap or an example of how to go about getting to your grade equivalent, regardless of the university you want to attend. All universities have websites with lots of help and also contact information if you can not seem to find the page or information you need. Hope that this was helpful and if you feel it was, please share with your friends and fellow students. If you are not a STUDDYS Member yet, do REGISTERand become a member NOW to enable you to receive all new and helpful content and other cool stuff! You can also find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Studdys. Click on image below to view video!